Richard Linklater’s latest film “Hit Man”, which was released on Netflix in last week, is a delightful black comedy packed with lots of wit, humor, and personality to be appreciated. What we get here is often typical to the core, but its offbeat comic spirit is charming and infectious to say the least, and we gladly go along with that even when things become a little more serious than expected later in the story.

The story, which is loosely based on the real-life story of the 2001 Texas Monthly magazine article of the same name by Skip Hollandsworth (He previously collaborated with Linklater in “Bernie” (2011), by the way), mainly revolves around Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), who is your average nerdy college professor but actually has a more exciting job to do behind his back. He has closely worked with the local police in New Orleans, Louisiana as a tech guy mainly because of his considerable skill and knowledge on those electronic stuffs, and this has surely brought some fun and excitement into his rather mundane bachelor life.

However, there comes a little change for this unofficial part-time job of his on one day. Because an undercover cop supposed to disguise himself as a professional hit man for one particular sting operation gets himself suspended for a while due to some serious misdemeanor, Gary is asked to do the job instead of operating inside a van as usual, and, what do you know, he does the job much better than anyone expected. Sure, he is a bit nervous at first, but he turns out to be pretty convincing in his performance, and that is the beginning of another fun and excitement for him.

As its hero subsequently tries many different things for a series of other similar sting operations, the movie has a lot fun with how he easily and confidently fools his targets in one way or another. After all, most people do not know that much about how those professional hit men actually look or behave (I do not know either, by the way), so Gary can freely change his appearance among various disguises created by himself, and he feels all the more liberating in addition to being quite proud of helping the police more. As a matter of fact, his new job makes him a lot more enthusiastic about his college lectures on psychology and philosophy, mainly because he can observe real bits of human nature as having the close encounters with various persons eager to eliminate their respective troubles by any means necessary (A lesson: any kind of human service can be a valuable conduit to the knowledge on human nature).

And then he happens to encounter a woman named Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona), who incidentally wants him to kill her mean husband simply for her freedom. As listening to her, Gary finds himself getting quite sympathetic to her, so he ends up persuading her not to hire him instead of getting her caught on the spot, but then he accidentally gets involved more with her later. No matter how much he tries to stay on the line between him and her, the romantic heat becomes more evident to both of them, and that naturally leads to some big trouble for them.

After that narrative point, the movie becomes relatively darker than before as approaching to the areas of film noir thriller, but it never stops its comic dance even during this part. As things get quite more complicated along the story, our hero must try to outsmart a few figures who can jeopardize the circumstance at any point, and there eventually comes a point where he becomes a bit more serious about his supposedly fake persona, but we keep getting amused more as his story takes one absurd plot turn after another.

The movie surely depends a lot on the talent and presence of Glen Powell, who also wrote the screenplay along with Linklater besides serving as one of its producers. As already shown from his breakout notable turn in Linklater’s previous film “Everybody Wants Some!” (2016), Powell can be effortlessly smart, funny, and charismatic just like Matthew McConaughey, and he gives us several priceless moments of hilarity in addition to generating the palpable chemistry between him and Adria Arjona during several key scenes. Right from their first moment in the film, he and Arjona instantly click well with each other, and their comic interactions throughout the film is another source for amusement for us.

Besides Powell and Arjona, the movie also has a bunch of equally colorful supporting performers to enjoy. As three different police figures around Gary, Retta, Austin Amelio, and Sanjay Rao have each own comic moment to shine, and the special mention goes to a number of different minor supporting performers playing those various persons targeted by Gary and his police colleagues, who all contribute much to the local background and atmosphere of the movie.

Overall, “Hit Man” is another witty and engaging work from Linklater, who has seldom disappointed me since I watched “Before Sunrise” (1995) and then “Before Sunset” (2004) around 20 years ago. While it does not reach to the greatness of the Before Trilogy and “Boyhood” (2014), the movie is on par with many of his better works such as “Waking Life” (2001) and “School of Rock” (2003), and it is certainly nice to see Linklater bouncing back from the disappointment of “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” (2019). In short, this is one of more enjoyable offerings from Netflix during this year, and you will be definitely surer about its lead actor’s rising stardom than before.